These days, motor vehicles have a multitude of active and passive safety systems for avoiding accidents or for mitigating their effects. Among such systems are, in particular, electronic stability programs ESP, different types of driver-assistance systems such as ACC or Lane Keeping Support LKS, as well as airbag and other restraining systems.
The active safety systems known from the related art usually intervene in the driving if particular trigger criteria are met, e.g., if the vehicle is oversteering or understeering. The mentioned actuating interventions are meant to support the driver in stabilizing the vehicle or in very quickly resuming control again in critical situations.
Current electronic stability programs determine the type and magnitude of the control interventions on the basis of the instantaneous moving state of the vehicle. In so doing, the deviation of measurable motion variables such as the yaw rate, for instance, from a setpoint value that represents the driver-desired direction is evaluated. In the case of an ESP, if the deviation exceeds particular limit values an attempt is made to reduce this deviation by wheel-specific braking interventions.
However, if the vehicle is no longer able to be stabilized at all within the framework of the physical driving limits, then such interventions may also have the effect that the vehicle remains longer than necessary in a moving state, in particular in the transverse direction, that is critical for the passengers. For instance, a situation may arise in which the rotary motion of the vehicle is actually arrested by the electronic stability program, but the vehicle continues to slide in the transverse direction. Without the intervention of the dynamic stability control, the vehicle would have rotated further about the vertical axis and then would have rolled backwards further, for instance. For the passengers this situation would be considerably less risky than the transverse sliding of the vehicle with the risk of a side impact. Knowledge of the future rotational behavior (possibly assuming a particular stabilizing intervention) is therefore important for a further improvement in the passenger protection.